Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Why Have a Democracy?
(Photo: Eliot Cohen by Eric Gibson/ New America via Wikipedia)
Eliot Cohen is a Never-Trump, former Bush Administration State Department official who was interviewed on the “Limited Liability” podcast released April 13 by Jewish Insider. Assessing the situation in Ukraine, Cohen heavily criticized all three of the post-Bush 43 Administrations. But this quote is what stood out for me:
The Trump administration was very peculiar in that it was a little bit like 18th century France, you know, where the king had one foreign policy and the, you know, foreign policy establishment of the time had a different foreign policy, sometimes diametrically opposed. And, you know, I think it’s fair to say that a lot of the, you know, sort of the H.R. McMasters and John Boltons in this world were actually resolutely anti-Russian. Trump was not. Trump was pro-Putin. (27:42 to 28:08)
Neither of the hosts, former Trump official Rich Goldberg or former Obama official Jerrod Bernstein, pushed back in any way. And that’s appalling in and of itself. A statement such as this shows that, according to the foreign policy “experts,” the President of the United States should have no say in the policy of the country he was elected to lead. As long as there is a “consensus” among the elites, the opinions of the President and the people are irrelevant. (And that’s not even touching on the veracity of the “pro-Putin” remark.)
So, as the Never-Trumpers drone on about “saving our democracy,” I ask “What democracy?” I certainly do not support giving any president of any party a blank check. But shouldn’t all the checks on the Executive come from the co-equal branches of the government and not from within the Executive Branch itself? If the President of the United States has no authority over his own constitutional branch of government, why have elections in the first place? We can just as easily autopilot ourselves into WWIII, no?
People like Cohen expect the President to be both their empty vessel and their fall guy when everything goes south. This is not the sign of a healthy “democracy.”
Published in Foreign Policy
Sounds like Trump was incapable of the bare minimum of what a president is elected to do, manage the White House staff and the executive branch.
I don’t think any president gets elected to “manage staff.”
Also, when you have no power to discipline the vast majority of your staff, and they are actively hostile to what you’re trying to do, “managing” staff is unlikely.
Right. A president is elected to keep his promises.
And that Trump actually tried to do but mostly was thwarted, by federal judges (plural), by congressional Republicans, the FBI, the State Department, and most of all by the CIA. The Press in an unaccountable historic precedent called him a liar on national television within minutes of his being sworn in. But yes, this resistance included even his own staff.
And he didn’t even have a bathroom server. He didn’t use a cigar as a gyn tool. He didn’t invade another country. He didn’t preside over the government take over of US health insurance industry. He didn’t put barbed wire around the White House. And apparently he had laid a peaceful plan for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
Due to federal judges he couldn’t even build a border wall until he wrangled out elective funds from elsewhere. And given such domestic resistance all he was left to do was renegotiate NAFTA, get NATO to pay its fair share, cow North Korea, collar the Chinese, and bring peace to the Middle East.
What the heck did this guy do wrong to get this much negative attention? Oh, mean tweets and spray-on skin bronzer. Yes, that’s surely democracy in action. :)
Everybody needs to leave this discussion, go watch ten or twenty episodes of Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister, then come back and go through this again.
Say what?
@flicker I think what you have pointed out shows the damaging effect of the diminishing influence of Christianity in our culture. Some people display what others consider deplorable behavior at some stage in their life. Christianity exhorts its adherents to act in forgiveness and help those individuals when they decide to act in ways to help their fellow children of God. People do change. In Trump’s case we saw many Americans, some of whom claim the Christian mantle, act in exactly the opposite manner to which they have been commanded and that was very destructive to the Trump Presidency and the American people’s republic. I personally was moved at a certain point to put all of Trump’s previous life style away and deal with the service he offered Americans at considerable personal sacrifice. His behaviors may have been less than desirable demeanor to some but I thought his service honorable to his oath of office, an oath some others serving currently have failed to honor.
The Next Republican President should fire everybody.
If it were me, the Pentagon would would be stripped and replaced with people no higher and O6.
Yeah, what’s all this emphasis on “democracy’? I thought democracy was the rule of the majority, regardless of the effects on the minority — winners versus losers. I know that generally, democracy is used to denote the people’s rule, but it’s a specific form of rule that can be tyrannizing to the minority. That’s supposed to be why we have a republic.
Either way, self-rule requires respect to be held for all others by all the citizenry. Equality under the law, created equal, no respecter of persons (which means impartiality). All that good and godly Christ-like stuff.
That may not be what some people have in mind when they vote for a president, some want that person to be the nation’s parent, but that is exactly what the job entails. The president is the chief executive and in charge of the executive branch of government. Foreign policy is especially the president’s to manage.
The president has virtually absolute power to fire members of his staff and executive department leadership.
He can fire his appointees. He cannot fire permanent bureaucracy. Three thousand out of over a hundred thousand. (I think he has more authority over the military as commander in chief.) That means he has people like Vindman in the White House actively working against him. Forget about in the larger bureaucracy.
Both Russia and Ukraine are pursuing a war-ending solution. Who isn’t, for that matter?
Biden isn’t. He doesn’t want this war to end. Once again he spewed out some stupid nonsense that threatens any attempt at peace.
From his first day in office Trump was not able to do what you have described because Democrats and bureaucrats from the previous administration assisted by those defeated in the 2016 election were undermining his administration and it was underway before his inauguration. He barely got rid of Comey and that was questioned. The betrayals were everywhere in both the executive branch and in the Congress. There has never been anything like that in the modern era.
Democracy is what the Leftists want and keep screaming about but that is not what we have and that is what the Republicans must protect.
What makes you think he doesn’t want this war to end?
His frequent intemperate remarks.
Has he made any intemperate remark like, “I want this war to go on forever?” Not that I’ve heard.
Last summer he made remarks that seemed to whip up the scare factor about Russia invading Ukraine, and those remarks may have encouraged Putin to think that the time had come to invade. But even as evil as that would have been, I don’t see how it shows that he doesn’t want the war to end. I think he wanted the affair to end with some kind of Finlandization of Ukraine, perhaps via the Minsk accords, which if true was also evil. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want the war to end.
Those appointees can assign or reassign members of the bureaucracy who do not perform as expected. Trump’s failure to implement his policies is his fault, no one else’s.
Also, Trump had absolute authority to remove members of the National Security Council staff such as LTC Vindman.
His removal of Comey was questioned because he idiotically went on television and told the world he did so because he wanted an investigation into his campaign to end. Presidents can abuse their power.
You are not making the point you think you are by saying he was incapable of performing his job to manage the executive branch.
The Director of the National Security Council could do that but didn’t do his job. Cause here would not have been differences in policy view but simple insubordination by Vindman. Vindman was taking information to another agency and Congress without any authority to do that.
You think the POTUS should be digging down into these organizations to find insubordinate bureaucrats?
So now your excuse is Trump hired someone incapable of doing his job? What happened to Trump only hiring the best people?
Well, funny you should ask that. If Obama’s people hadn’t railroaded General Michael Flynn out of that job, Vindman would have never happened. And it is not a lack of capability to do the job, it is people who think they know better. Are you blind?
@klaatu I know you have never been a supporter of President Trump but he was not even close to the biggest problem in the federal government. We are seeing the manifestation of that now. And we did see this as it played out in the Trump Administration, our federal bureaucracy is loaded with those who will join criminal activity and corruption in a New York minute. In your commentary you only lay these things on Trump and that is far from the true condition.
Obama’s people forced Flynn to lie to the VP?
The “people who think they know better” were his subordinates whom he was incapable of managing.
Trump was and remains a disaster for the country and the conservative movement.
That Trump was incapable of performing the most basic functions of his office was the least of his issues.
You seem to be lacking many revealed facts regarding the criminal behavior of Trump’s political enemies. You need to keep up with where we are today.
He’s lied? What was the lie. The VP said he lied, but that was just Pence.